Non Voting Republicans Helped Elect Democrats

The biggest takeaway from last week’s election was the lack of red. That is lack of red votes.

Let’s look at back at the prior Gubernatorial elections in 2014 & 2018 to put this year’s into context.

In 2014, Republican Allan Kittleman defeated Democratic challenger Courtney Watson in the 2014 Howard County Exective race 53,207 to 50,207.

In 2018, Kittleman actually received more votes at 67,566 than 2014 but was defeated as Democrat Calvin Ball received 75,566.

This year in the Howard County Executive rematch Ball only received 70,723 votes but still won as Kittleman only received 50,000.

The late Kevin Kamenetz defeated his Republican opponent 143,904 to 111,853 in the 2014 Baltimore County Executive race.

In 2018, Republican candidate Al Redmer received almost as many votes as Kamenetz did in 2014 at 135,702 but was defeated by John Olszewski who received 186,693 votes.

Olszewski only received 137,520 votes last Tuesday but it was enough as Republican challenger Pat McDonough only received 88,354 votes.

There are tons of other examples. When you look at the data, Republicans did well in 2014 and won many races that year. In 2018, the Republican turnout remained strong but Democrat turnout was high for the anti-Trump vote to cancel out their votes.

The best of example of that was in the District 8 state Senate race. Democratic Sen. Kathy Klausmeier defeated her Democratic opponent 23,638 to 14,938 in 2014.

When Republican Christian Miele challenged her in 2018, his camp was hoping to get around 22,000 to 23,000 votes. And he did as Miele received 23,271 votes.

However; Klausmeier still won and recieved 24,332 vote. How did she win? There were about 7,000 to 8,000 people who never vote in the Gubernatorial election.

They had no idea who was their state senator. They didn’t who Christian Miele or Kathy Klausmeier were. They just came out and voted for all Democrats on the ballot because they hated Donald Trump being president.

When I saw the early returns on Tuesday, I thought it was another 2018 in 2022 as Democrats were winning by large margins. I thought it was high Democratic turnout again but when I looked, most Democratic numbers were back at 2014 levels.

It was the Republicans that were at low numbers. Republicans could have won many of these races if they turned out.

Why was turnout so low? Can you blame Dan Cox or blame Larry Hogan? Either way, the old saying applied on Tuesday. “Republicans that don’t vote help elect Democrats.”